PHARRELL FOR REAL

The artist and businessman shows us a different facet of his skill set

- Jacqueline Tsang

Pharrell Williams is beyond happy. The artist and businessman is striding between recording and mixing rooms at a studio in Paris at 1.03 am. One moment he’s recording a verse for his upcoming song, hitting a high note that most prepubescent boys would struggle to reach; the next, he’s in the adjacent room with rapper Kid Cudi, debating the merits of one song versus another and composing runs on a keyboard. The temperature in the studio is not much warmer than the Parisian winter outside, there is an entourage of half a dozen individuals around the singer, tapping away on laptops or aiming cameras and smartphones in his direction, but his whole world at the moment is just a one-metre radius from the keyboard. This is Pharrell in the throes of pure creation.

“I’m just a guy who likes to make things,” says the man who was just confirmed as Louis Vuitton’s new men’s creative director, taking over the role from the late and great Virgil Abloh. The brand’s new chairman and CEO, Pietro Beccari, lauded Pharrell’s “creative vision beyond fashion”; the first collection by him will already be out this June in time for men’s fashion week in Paris.

Pharrell has also created everything from chart-topping music hits to an equal-opportunity skincare and product brand to head-turning jewellery pieces. It is the latter in particular that brought him to Hong Kong last month during Art Basel, as he launched his second auction on Joopiter, the digital-first auction house that he founded. Set for a scant five months after his first auction, Son of a Pharaoh, which reaped US$5.25million in sales and comprised the artist’s personal collectibles of both sentimental and monetary value, the second offering showed a different facet of Pharrell’s design skills.